|Allison Holt (US)|
Allison Holt is an American artist whose work explores, constructs and visualizes contemporary and traditional systems of knowledge, creating forms that expose hybrid realities through the use of video, sculpture, performance and diagrams. Her work emerges out of the rigorous interrogation of existing philosophies and cognitive processes, examining the relationships between reality, identity, cognition and illusion. She holds a B.A. from The Evergreen State
College (Olympia, WA) and an M.F.A. from Massachusetts College of Art (Boston, MA). Holt has exhibited in venues such as the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Boston CyberArts Festival, the House Of Natural Fiber (Yogyakarta), Howard Yezerski Gallery (Boston), Institute Seni Indonesia (Surakarta), Upgrade!Boston (Melbourne, AUS), and has held solo shows at Axiom Gallery for New and Experimental Media (Boston) and Cemeti Art House (Yogyakarta) where she was a 2010 artist in residence. Her other residencies include the Experimental Television Center (NY) and the Santa Barbara Contemporary Arts Forum (CA). Holt is a researcher/developer for ZooMorph, a project by new media artist Lisa Jevbratt, and was a 2009-J. William Fulbright Fellow in Central Java, Indonesia.
"In my research, I try to find a debatable balance between scientific and phenomenological human experience. I#8217m interested in the idea of knowledge as a living thing, independent of the human mind" driven by questions like, "How does knowledge behave? How does it interact with us? Does it court us? Does it influence our behavior? Under what conditions does it like to come to us? How can we understand its limits? its potential?," I seek to create situations in which this thing, with its own character, habits, behavior patterns, and environment, can be imagined and felt."